Polymer-supported, acid catalyst, conjugate

Polystyrene (87) is formed from st3rrene (15) and the resrdting pol3rmer beads are very useful as supports to which other reagents can be attached. Such solid supports have been used for the preparation of polyamides from amino acids (they are called polypeptides see Chapter 27, Section 27.4). Polystyrene has many other uses as well. If you have encased a flower or an insect in plastic from a commercial kit, you used a liquid and added a few drops of catalyst to make the plastic. The liquid is usually styrene and the catalyst is often a solution of a peroxide. Styrene and other conjugated aryl alkenes react with HCl just as if they were simple alkenes (see Chapter 10, Section 10.2). The same is true in polymerization reactions, where the aryl group is a substituent on the polymer chain. 

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